I hold no brief for London Metropolitan University (LMU), which has been poorly managed for a long time. Nevertheless I feel that the UK Border Agency’s decision to remove its Highly Trusted Status in such a dramatic fashion was a poor one.

The decision was apparently made on the basis of three institutional failings. The first related to the number of students in the LMU sample who apparently did not have valid leave to remain. This is partly a consequence of the complicated bureaucratic procedures which applicants have to go through to obtain a visa even though their applications are perfectly genuine. There are in my experience always disputes about non-EEA status which drag on for months. University applicants who were in the UK already as school or college students may find they have to leave the country in order to reapply: some understandably try to cut corners. Long delays are reported in processing applications, while course starting dates wait for nobody. Most other universities will also have students on their books who should strictly not be here.

The second failing was inadequate documentation of the English language skills of applicants. Such documentation is difficult for applications tutors who have to compare different qualifications, and often have to wait for test reports from all over the world (some parts of which are in chaos, like Syria today or Iraq a few years ago) while attempting to fill target numbers against tight deadlines. It is a problem, but surely a problem concerning the academic integrity of courses, all of which will have language entrance requirements – and thus surely the business of the Quality Assurance Agency rather than the Border Agency. I have not, to be fair to LMU, seen evidence that the English standards on their courses are any worse than those at many comparable universities.

The third problem was attendance monitoring. Universities are not like schools where attendance is legally required and which can keep accurate registers on a day-to-day basis. I know, again from personal experience, that monitoring attendance in large lecture groups, for example, is extremely difficult. In London few students live on the campus where their teaching takes place and absence isn’t always apparent. It’s not just foreign students, incidentally: the attendance of domestic students is also increasingly erratic. A lot of teaching is of poorish quality, and some students prefer to work online at home rather than in libraries these days. Many programmes have project-based work which does not require regular attendance. Universities, including LMU, have invested considerable sums in new technologies to assist in keeping tabs on students. It doesn’t always work very well, and mistakes are strongly resented by students.

None of this excuses LMU’s failings, but it does suggest that they are failings shared to a greater or lesser extent by other universities – including some which have a far better academic reputation than LMU. A consistent trawling through the records (UKBA doesn’t have the resources, thankfully) would surely lead to the withdrawal of HTS from several other universities. There may be some merit in setting an example – the shooting of the odd admiral, as Voltaire remarked, to encourage the others. But there are also dangers. LMU is probably irrevocably damaged by this episode. Its students – domestic as well as non-EU – face great uncertainty. Those staff who can will leave in droves, anticipating the job losses which are inevitable. Others, less fortunate, will have a demoralising and much more difficult task in keeping some part of the LMU show on the road.

Inevitable, too, will be the fallout for the sector as a whole. David Willetts may flap around trying to assure people that this is a one-off, but the rest of the world will surely read this as a black mark against the whole UK university sector. Why go to university in a country which, while boasting the rule of law, allows an agency not even connected with education to arbitrarily ruin your educational plans and cost you huge amounts of money and stress? Better to go to Australia, New Zealand or Germany, where they order things better. And thus another huge invisible export industry goes down the pan.

And for what? To keep people who want to work out of the country: that’s what immigration restrictions do. For even if we allow that the motivation for some of these students may have been to work in the UK, so what? This demographic would be likely to be net contributors to the exchequer. Relatively few would stay forever.

If we really do need restrictions on immigration, why not move to a Gary Becker-style requirement for all immigrants to put up a fee or bond, repayable perhaps when students leave the country? This would generate some income and save resources as Border Agency staff were either sacked or redeployed more productively, for instance staffing Heathrow’s passport checkpoints. It would also mean universities would be able to deploy more staff towards teaching and improving the student experience rather than checking pieces of paper. At the moment, I fear that the LMU episode will mean all universities will instead be panicked into hugely expanding their administrative function to pre-empt any further nosing around by a UKBA which has got the taste for blood.

There are many things wrong with UK universities, but they relate to quality and student experience issues which are really not the concern of border guards in a free society.

Len Shackleton

Len Shackleton is an Editorial and Research Fellow at the IEA and Professor of Economics at the University of Buckingham. He was previously Dean of the Royal Docks Business School at the University of East London and prior to that was Dean of the Westminster Business School. He has also taught at Queen Mary, University of London and worked as an economist in the Civil Service. His research interests are primarily in the economics of labour markets. He has worked with many think tanks, most closely with the Institute of Economic Affairs, where he is an Economics Fellow. He edits the journal Economic Affairs, which is co-published by the IEA and the University of Buckingham.

4 thoughts on “Immigration crackdown will damage UK universities”

The Public Account Committee suggests taht the UKBA is not blameless in all this:

” Constant changes have resulted in overly complex rules and guidance. The customer support provided by the Agency has not been good enough. Due in part to poor implementation, the Agency has had to make successive changes to address weaknesses in Tier 4 controls and administrative processes. Little regard has been given to the regulatory burden and costs of constant change and unnecessary complexity on the education institution. The timings of changes have not worked well with the academic cycle and although the Agency has consulted the sector it has not acted on their responses. The Agency’s customer helplines are unhelpful and the named contact points promised for highly trusted sponsors are no longer available”.

Whatever happened to Willett’s ideology of introducing a free market into HE? So far he’s retained price maintenance and the cap on production, and this is nothing but a trade embargo, but bizarrely one on exports.

On moral grounds it seems a bit odd that 2,600 people – of which, according to the UKBA’s own figures, between 45% to 75% are not guilty, nor even accused, of any crime whatsoever – are threatened with deportation.

About 2600 non eu student at London Met could be forced to leave the UK if they cannot find a new sponsor within 60 days after the UK border agency revoked the university ‘licence to sponsor student visa.Sadly,these students would join new institutions or possible might get into the country. I feel one of them!! Did the UKBA think them before make decision?

Higher Education can and should function as an “export industry” bringing international students to the UK, educating them well, benefiting from the resulting pro-UK sentiments when those students return home and of course using the income generated to strengthen UK education provision. But that requires ‘joined up government” and not the mess we have here. I have heard that the LondonMet visa situation is big news in India, and the expectation is that many potential students will choose other Anglophone countries for their studies rather than coming to the UK.

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